Educational Approach

Identifying students’ needs and learning styles

There is no single perfect type of student for the ISchool. We welcome all learners with a variety of skills, talents, interests, and learning styles. We encourage those seeking to grow their curiosity, enthusiasm, and optimism. Because we provide personalized learning experiences and an open-minded classroom setting, we are an ideal educational environment for a wide range of personality types and learner profiles. We aim to affirm students in their potential and motivate them to recognize and utilize that potential to the greatest extent of their ability.

When we help students recognize and understand their own personal learning style, they can more effectively and efficiently pursue their education.

Examples of questions we might ask:

Is the student a visual learner? Do they learn best through observation, and/or visual representation such as pictures, diagrams, and flow charts?

Is the student an auditory or verbal learner? Do they learn best through hearing and listening, oral practice and memorization, and/or written and spoken instruction and explanations?

Is the student a kinesthetic or active learner? Do they learn best through touching and doing, personal connections to topics, demonstration, experimenting, and/or collaboration with others?

Is the student a reflective learner? Do they learn best through thinking things through, intrapersonal and introspective, writing, and/or working alone?

Is the student a sensory learner? Do they learn best through concrete, practical approaches that are oriented towards facts and procedures?

Is the student an intuitive learner? Do they learn best through conceptual, innovative approaches that are oriented toward theories and meanings?

Is the student an inductive learner? Do they learn best when they proceed from the specific to the general?

Is the student a deductive learner? Do they learn best when they proceed from the general to the specific?

Is the student sequential learner? Do they learn best when the approach is linear, orderly, logical and/or in small incremental steps?

Is the student a global learner? Do they learn best when the approach is spontaneous and creative?

Are they an idea person, systems thinker, and/or quick to make conclusions? Are they nonlinear thinkers and/or learn in large leaps?

Flexibility in the Classroom and Beyond

Flexibility, as in the ability to bend to circumstances easily without disrupting the path to academic success, because staying on course despite the bumps along the way is an important life skill.

We strive not solely to develop a your knowledge and intelligence, but also to encourage character growth and provoke healthy development in many areas of life. Community involvement and engagement with national and global topics create spaces and opportunities for you to learn more about yourself and the world around you.

What does that mean for school? It means school starts at 9:30 with students well rested and ready to take on the world. It means flexible scheduling to allow for travel, illness, study overseas, competitions, and life’s unexpected exigencies — all while staying on track to graduation. It means focused effort at school, and playing hard when you leave so you can be fully engaged in the world around you, whether in sports, projects or community activities — no homework marathons unless you’re inspired to see a project through to completion. It means school year-round, because no one needs time off for summer harvests when you can have three-day weekends throughout the year. It means finals happen when each course is mastered, not in a frenzied marathon cramming of knowledge just before test time — only to have the short-term knowledge be forgotten days later.

Examples of students and our approaches:

Competitive athletes

"Our daughter found that the I-School {eLearning Café} was a welcome alternative to high school classes she had to take but didn’t fit into her sports training schedule. There are some very gifted athletes in our school district, and the scheduling freedom created by online study with teachers at hand to help was a win-win situation for her and us."

J. DermodyOctober 31, 2013

Homeschoolers

ISchool is a member of the local consortium of homeschool organizations and the Nevada Homeschool Leaders United. We offer enthusiastic and non-sectarian support to area homeschoolers. Faculty and staff are happy to guide families through the documentation required to homeschool your student in Nevada and help them get into the college of their choice.

Our elementarystudents generally follow the Core Knowledge curriculum and are in the process of becoming accredited as a Core Knowledge School. Additionally, we recommend the K12 curriculum, which has much in common with the Core Knowledge sequence. We also utilize BrainPop, ALEKS, and Fast ForWord among other tools to supplement a core curriculum.

The individualized plan we put together for our middle and high schoolstudents reflects their unique interests, abilities, and college and career goals. Course content is taken from a variety of vetted sources that meet the criteria described here.

We are a satellite school of the state-approved Independence High School in Washington State, which has been an ardent supporter of homeschoolers and unschoolers for 30 years and through which we issue high school diplomas meeting graduation requirements for Washington State.

Unique needs

Whether a student has a chronic illness, a debilitating physical limitation, or a learning disability of some kind, we can collaborate to create an academic schedule to fit their needs. We meet students wherever they are at, and support an environment that enables them to feel successful. In whatever ways a student might have previously felt limited in their education, we aim to discover even more ways for them to feel limitless in their ability.

Gifted and Talented

Distance learning

We offer a distance learning option to communicate with educators through skype, a variety of online programs, and phone calls. We can help students establish and maintain a program which will integrate their travel experience so that they may work from afar.

We also meet with our Reno and Carson students at South Valleys Library, 15650 Wedge Parkway, Reno, Tuesday and Thursday, 9-4.

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Learn about Education Elements and high level concepts of blended learning.

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